Tech

Swagway teardown: What's inside the year's most talked about device?

Hoverboards are hot. They’re a top-selling holiday item. They’re also banned by airlines, illegal on the streets of New York City, barred from trade shows and, occasionally, burst into flames.

Rarely have we seen a piece of technology take off so quickly and then suffer as greatly as hoverboards (a.k.a. self-balancing smartboards) are right now. Of course, as with many things, hoverboard is an overly broad term referring to a whole class of personal mobility devices, none of which actually “hover.”

Yes, according to one report, most hoverboards are coming out of a small cluster of factories in China. But that doesn’t necessarily make them all alike.

There are a handful of leading brands, like IO Hawk, that helped establish the product category. More recently, Swagway moved to the forefront with one of the first sub-$400 hoverboards.

The brand became so popular that it’s now the target of expertly crafted counterfeits (see the fake Swagway box below). It’s these devices, Swagway representatives contend, that are likely the ones bursting into flames.

When I spoke to Swagway earlier last week, they insisted that they have no direct reports of any of their units catching fire. The company told me they use only certified Samsung or LG rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries and UL certified adapters. The also warned consumers to buy only from authorized Swagway dealers.

However, on Saturday, Amazon pulled all Swagways from its site and Chappaqua in upstate New York a model identified by a local fire department as “Swagway Smart Balancing Electric Skateboard” caught fire. Now the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is investigating at least 10 fires with hoverboards in nine states. It’s unclear if all of them are branded “Swagway.”

Swagway representatives continue to insist that with so many counterfeit devices on the market it can be hard to tell a fake from the real thing. Swagway, however, may not be helping itself. So-called “official boxes” at authorized dealer Modell’s have different product descriptions than the official box we got directly from Swagway.

On an image of fake Swagway packaging, which Mashable obtained from Swagway over the weekend, the box describes the counterfeit product as a “Smart Balancing Skateboard,” which is the same description we found on Swagway’s official packaging. Does this mean that the Modell’s product is a fake or that Swagway is now describing the rider as a “Hands-free Smart Board?” We've asked Swagway for comment and will update this post with their reply.

A photo of a fake Swagway box provided by Swagway.

Image: swagway

The problem is, beyond packaging differences, it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between a true Swagway and a knock-off. Plus, there is no agreed upon way to properly build one of these still very new personal mobility devices.

Tear it down

Perhaps the truth lies on the inside. Swagway told us they use only brand-name batteries, which was a claim we could verify, especially since it appears as if it’s the rechargeable batteries on some of these devices that are catching fire.

One of our in-house, official Swagways broke down, perhaps when someone jumped on it like this. Someone on staff had cracked the cast aluminum chassis, but everything else was intact.

After removing almost two dozen screws, and finding where the aluminum chassis had cracked, we quickly identified the rather large battery pack and noticed that it was, as Swagway promised, a Samsung battery pack.

Swagway made the smart decision of placing the primary, roughly 4x4-inch motherboard on one side of the Swagway and the battery pack on the other. These are two potentially heat-generating parts that, in this configuration, probably won’t heat up each other.

In general, we were quite impressed with the build quality. Every screw was fully seated, and connections were tightly held together and then covered in glue to keep them from wiggling apart when you ride the Swagway around.

There was nothing about the Swagway and its components that looked slapdash or cheap.

Does this mean that real Swagways aren’t catching fire? At this point, we really don’t know.

There is a possibility that Swagways and other hoverboards could become the “Click-Clacks” (also known as “Clackers”) of the 21st Century. A hugely popular toy in the 1970s, Click-Clack was basically two heavy, 1-inch plastic balls connected by a thick string. You moved the center of the string up and down to rapidly “click-clack” the balls together.” There were also incredibly dangerous and, more or less, a weapon. Despite selling like hotcakes in the '70s, they were quickly removed from the market. By 1985, Click Clacks were officially banned, but by then they had been long gone and forgotten.

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